Elias Harding had arrived at Port Phillip Bay on 2nd October 1838, with his young family. The Port Phillip area, which was then part of N.S.W., was being rapidly developed, and good land was being opened up for sheep farming and grazing. Free settlers were being granted one acre for every pound sterling or pound’s worth of property brought into the country, and so Elias received a grant of 1,000 acres from the Government and became a pioneer settler at “Bream Creek”, Connewarre. In due course, Elias was able to take up several thousand acres of leasehold land in the same area. Shortly after he purchased the licence for the Mount Pleasant Run from his cousin Silas Harding.